- Author: Dr Helen Lawal
- Read time: 5 minutes
Why Healthy Eating Feels Hard With ADHD
ADHD can make eating well feel overwhelming. Learn why healthy eating can feel so difficult and simple ADHD-friendly strategies to make feel less overwhelming and more doable.
If you have late-diagnosed ADHD and feel constantly overwhelmed by food, whether that’s what to cook, what to buy or how to plan meals then you are in the right place.
ADHD can make everyday decision-making harder, and food requires us to make decisions all day long. When the overwhelm and mental fatigue builds up, eating healthily consistently can feel really challenging.
As an ADHD woman and Nutritionist working with hundreds of ADHD adults across my support groups, bootcamps and 1:1 programme, here are the common obstacles I see getting in the way of eating well. And what I’m going to share with you is what you can do to make good nutrition feel easier.
ADHD, Disordered Eating and Nutrition: What the Research Really Shows
Research shows that ADHD is associated with a higher risk of eating disorders and disordered eating patterns, including binge eating disorder, bulimia nervosa and anorexia nervosa.
A major systematic review of eating disorders and disordered eating behaviours found strong links between neurodevelopmental conditions (including ADHD) and disordered eating patterns (1).
Another meta-analysis also found ADHD was significantly associated with binge eating, bulimia and unhealthy eating patterns, including impulsive eating behaviours (2).
When you combine this with late diagnosis, years of dieting, shame around food and a culture obsessed with body size, your relationship with food can understandably feel complicated or “messy”.
For specialist support with an eating disorder: BEAT Eating Disorder Helplines
The women I support have disordered and chaotic eating without necessarily fulfilling the criteria for eating for eating disorders. They struggle with routine, consistency, sugar cravings and often unwanted weight gain too. As ADHD adults we have additional health challenges too.
ADHD and Long-Term Health Risks You Should Know About
As ADHD adults we have additional health challenges too. A large-scale research has shown that adults with ADHD are more likely to have:
- Obesity
- Type 2 diabetes
- Cardiovascular disease
A major meta-analysis found significantly higher odds of overweight and obesity among adults and children with ADHD compared to neurotypical controls (2). Another systematic review showed that ADHD is associated with higher odds of type 2 diabetes (3), and a 2023 meta-analysis demonstrated increased cardiovascular disease risk, including hypertension and heart disease, among people with ADHD (4).
And that’s why it’s so important to find helpful strategies to improve your nutrition and understand your relationship with food to reduce your risk of serious health problems later down the line. This isn’t about quick-fixes or dieting- they don’t work. This is about finding achievable and realistic ways to eat a healthy balanced diet or lose weight IF that’s a personal goal for you.
This is why I believe ADHD-informed nutrition support is not a nice luxury, it is essential for long-term health and overall wellbeing and quality of life.
Three Ways ADHD Makes Eating Healthily Feel Hard
Through my work with ADHD clients, there are 3 challenges that seem to appear again and again:
- Executive dysfunction
- Emotional dysregulation
- Overwhelm about deciding what to eat
1. Executive Function Challenges and Daily Food Decisions
Executive dysfunction is a really common challenge in individuals with ADHD – although it doesn’t form part of the DSM-IV diagnostic criteria, experts agree it is a core feature of ADHD.
Firstly I really dislike the prefix ‘dys’ as it feels negative and can influence someone’s perception of their capabilities. I much prefer to talk about the challenges with executive functions and be open to the possibility of overcoming them, or working with them and thinking of creative ways to navigate them.
Executive function involves a set of skills that help you get things done. Executive functions help us to prioritise, plan, organise and remember the details needed to initiate and complete tasks. So it’s no surprise that something as complex as meal planning some individuals with ADHD will find very difficult.
On the surface eating healthily and cooking might sound easy but lets break it down to really understand the complexity of the different steps involved:
- First you have to read, review and weigh up the information about nutrition and decide what a healthy recipe or meal is.
- Secondly, you have to select recipes that suit your taste preferences, sensory preferences, consider any intolerances or allergies and also consider all of these preferences for anyone else you are cooking for like your children or a partner.
- Next you have to make a list of all the food items you need to buy. This list of ingredients might include everything you might need for a whole week’s worth of meals- that’s potentially 21 meals and 14 snacks. That’s alot of decisions!
- Then there is the task of doing the actual food shop. Often in a brightly lit, busy supermarket with different smells, temperatures and noises. This environment is set up to tempt is in to impulse buys and buying sweet snacks and fizzy drinks.
All this before you have even got home to cook the food. Is it any wonder that eating healthily can feel completely mentally exhausting and overwhelming to the point of decision paralysis or chronic procrastination.
2. Emotional Dysregulation and Emotional Eating
Next there is the emotional roller coaster of living with ADHD to contend with, also known as emotional dysregulation – although not in the DSM-IV criteria either -it is also increasingly recognised as a core part of ADHD (5).
Emotional dysregulation, includes:
- Rapid mood shifts
- Emotional over-reactivity
- Difficulty recovering from stress
In these moments, food can become a tool for:
- Comfort
- Distraction
- Stimulation
- Soothing the nervous system
Often we food has reliably always been there for us. It’s important I clarify that emotional eating is a normal eating behaviour and something that impacts many people whether Neurodivergent or not, but the problems arise when we have an over-reliance on it and it begins to dictate the majority of our eating habits rather than just occasional emotional eating.
3. What Exactly Is a Healthy, Balanced Meal Anyway?
We live in an age of misinformation. In a recent paper in the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry by Yeung et al analysed the top 100 most-viewed TikTok videos about ADHD. These videos had a combined 283 million views and were shared an average of 31,000 times each (6).
They were analysed by a psychiatrist and a trainee psychiatrist. It was concerning what they found:
-𝟓𝟐% 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐯𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐨𝐬 𝐰𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐦𝐢𝐬𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠
-49 of those 52 were 𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐛𝐲 𝐩𝐞𝐨𝐩𝐥𝐞 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐧𝐨 𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐭𝐡𝐜𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐛𝐚𝐜𝐤𝐠𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝
-Even the 𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐜𝐜𝐮𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐯𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐨𝐬 𝐬𝐜𝐨𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝟗𝟎% 𝐨𝐧 “𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐚𝐛𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲”
𝐓𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐦𝐞𝐚𝐧𝐬 𝐀𝐃𝐇𝐃 𝐦𝐢𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐨𝐧𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐢𝐬 𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐲 𝐭𝐨 𝐝𝐢𝐠𝐞𝐬𝐭, 𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐲 𝐭𝐨 𝐫𝐞𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐭𝐨, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲 𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐲 𝐭𝐨 𝐛𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐞𝐯𝐞, 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐧 𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐢𝐭 𝐢𝐬 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐛𝐚𝐬𝐞𝐝.
And its no different for Nutrition advice – its often conflicting, extreme, and often fear-based.
With ADHD, this leads to:
- Avoidance
- All-or-nothing eating
- Trying restrictive trends
- Feeling paralysed by choices
What you need is reliable, evidence based information on what a healthy meal it, what a healthy diet looks like in reality and ti has to be realistic, balanced, achievable with space for you to enjoy that piece of chocolate cake or have a take-away if thats what makes you happy.
3 Simple Steps To Help Reduce ADHD Food Overwhelm
Step 1: Executive-Function-Friendly Healthy Eating Strategies
- Set up an online weekly food shop delivery and repeat weekly
- Repeat easy meals and slowly add in extra nutrition over time
- Cook when you in in the right head space and have enough energy
- Cook twice- east once. Cook double the amount you need and freeze the rest for another time.
Step 2: Understanding and Managing Sugar Cravings
- Identify emotional triggers and cues
- Stabilise blood sugar by increasing protein and fibre in your diet
- Use non-food related strategies to help cope with emotional overwhelm
Step 3: Simple, Evidence-Based Nutrition You Can Trust
We are living in an age of misinformation and this no doubt adds to the overwhelm and can be quite frankly dangerous.
My advice is to:
- Avoid influencer misinformation- check that the person has qualifications and real life experience of working with patients and clients. Check out my bio here.
- Ignore food fads and trends find foods and meals that work for you in the long term
- Choose realistic and sustainable healthy eating over perfect
Get Support to Overcome The Overwhelm & Make Healthy Eating Your Reality
Join my next ADHD Healthy Eating Bootcamp – Hyperfocused on Health. I have designed this group coaching programme for ADHD women just like you.
Hyperfocused on Health is an 8 week group coaching programme for ADHD women who want clarity, confidence, consistency, structure and support.
I will guide you step by step, each week so you can reduce overwhelm, take consistent action, get organised and finally understand the science behind nutrition for ADHD and cut out all the BS and misinformation!
Join the waiting list to be the first to hear when doors open:
→ Join the Waitlist for My Next Healthy Eating Bootcamp
→ Follow me @drhelenlawal on Instagram for reliable health and nutrition content you can trust
References
(1) Galmiche, M. et al. (2016) Prevalence of eating disorders over the 2000–2018 period: a systematic literature review. Clinical Psychology Review.
(2) Cortese, S. et al. (2016) Association Between ADHD and Obesity: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. American Journal of Psychiatry.
DOI: 10.1176/appi.ajp.2015.15101315
(3) Xiao, L. et al. (2022) The Relationship Between Diabetes Mellitus and ADHD: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Frontiers in Pediatrics. DOI: 10.3389/fped.2022.936813
(4) Li, L. et al. (2023)
ADHD Is Associated With Increased Risk of Cardiovascular Diseases: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. JCPP Advances.
DOI: 10.1002/jcv2.12159
(5) Shaw, P. et al. (2014) A neurodevelopmental perspective on the cognitive–emotional problems in ADHD. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry.
(6) Kordan, Z., Koran, J., Carcone, A.I., & Brooks, A. (2022) TikTok and Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder: A Cross-Sectional Study of Social Media Content Quality. Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, 67(12), 899–906. doi:10.1177/07067437221082854
